I am filling a sparse matrix P (230k,290k) with values coming from a text file which I read line by line, here is the (simplified) code
while ...
C = textscan(text_line,'%d','delimiter',',','EmptyValue', 0);
line_number = line_number+1;
P(line_number,:)=C{1};
end
the problem I have is that while at the beginning the
P(line_number,:)=C{1};
statement is fast, after a few thousands lines become exterely slow, I guess because Matlab need to find the memory space to allocate every time. Is there a way to pre-allocate memory with sparse matrixes? I don't think so but maybe I am missing something. Any other advise which can speed up the operation (e.g. having a lot of free RAM can make the difference?)
By far the fastest way to generate a sparse matrix wihtin matlab is to load all the values in at once, then generate the sparse matrix in one call to sparse
. You have to load the data and arrange it into vectors defining the row and column indices and values for each filled cell. You can then call sparse
using the S = sparse(i,j,s,m,n)
syntax.